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I Liked the idea of BFR's but in practice and actual application left alot to be desired. Though I do have a ton of great memories of tower fights that would last forever. I really hope this game is at least on par with what they learned from Pside.

BFR? I quit playing a month or two after release. The game just started to feel...boring, combat was boring to me since you didn't really get better just leveled up, no real skill to it. Also battles felt so pointless, you couldn't stop an attack, you just had to wait it out. Basically whichever side had less of a life outside the game won the battle. Did they ever address these problems?

BFR? I quit playing a month or two after release. The game just started to feel...boring, combat was boring to me since you didn't really get better just leveled up, no real skill to it. Also battles felt so pointless, you couldn't stop an attack, you just had to wait it out. Basically whichever side had less of a life outside the game won the battle. Did they ever address these problems?

No real skill to it? The whole point of certs was that the game was an FPS. It was nothing but skill. Levelling up just let you be more flexible.

If you were in an outfit in PlanetSide, you could easily organize a coordinated push to take a base or defend/flank a besieged one. While the pop was still high, the tide of battle could definitely be turned with some smart tactics or outfit-based teamwork.

The issue though was the pop was only high for the first month or so after launch. After that and the pop was so low the game was just you driving/flying around looking for a fight and taking bases by yourself uncontested.

If they want to make it a subscription MMO then I hope they do a one-server type deal like EVE so the population will always be as high as possible. If they're willing to make it free to play then I'd expect something where each island has a player cap and new islands are generated (randomly?) whenever there's enough players to create a new one.

BFR? I quit playing a month or two after release. The game just started to feel...boring, combat was boring to me since you didn't really get better just leveled up, no real skill to it. Also battles felt so pointless, you couldn't stop an attack, you just had to wait it out. Basically whichever side had less of a life outside the game won the battle. Did they ever address these problems?

No real skill to it? The whole point of certs was that the game was an FPS. It was nothing but skill. Levelling up just let you be more flexible.

If you were in an outfit in PlanetSide, you could easily organize a coordinated push to take a base or defend/flank a besieged one. While the pop was still high, the tide of battle could definitely be turned with some smart tactics or outfit-based teamwork.

I found the problem with the aiming was that it was way too easy, the targets moved slow and the bloom instantly turned to the size of an enemy at medium-long range. The only weapon not like that was the sniper rifle and that was really hard to miss with anyways.

The issue though was the pop was only high for the first month or so after launch. After that and the pop was so low the game was just you driving/flying around looking for a fight and taking bases by yourself uncontested.

If they want to make it a subscription MMO then I hope they do a one-server type deal like EVE so the population will always be as high as possible. If they're willing to make it free to play then I'd expect something where each island has a player cap and new islands are generated (randomly?) whenever there's enough players to create a new one.

I didn't play at launch. But when I did play it was pretty easy to look at the map and see where fights were taking place and take a shuttle there. There was also a sort of quick play option that would take you straight into a hostile area.

Pretty much, it was like shooting robots with a squirt gun, without the expected short circuiting.

The funny thing about stuff like this that a lot of people don't seem to realize: it doesn't actually really matter how much health people have, or how much damage you do, or how long it takes to kill people, or blah blah blah. The entire feeling of "my weapons are weak and useless" comes solely from feedback. If people aren't grunting and spewing fountains of blood and flinching as you shoot them, it will never feel like you are doing much damage. And so, in Planetside, where the extent of damage feedback was a small orange circle, your weapons never felt powerful.

Pretty much, it was like shooting robots with a squirt gun, without the expected short circuiting.

The funny thing about stuff like this that a lot of people don't seem to realize: it doesn't actually really matter how much health people have, or how much damage you do, or how long it takes to kill people, or blah blah blah. The entire feeling of "my weapons are weak and useless" comes solely from feedback. If people aren't grunting and spewing fountains of blood and flinching as you shoot them, it will never feel like you are doing much damage. And so, in Planetside, where the extent of damage feedback was a small orange circle, your weapons never felt powerful.

Well that and it did take quite a while to kill most of them, also most the weapons were kind of weak, even without a visual effect for the hit, there was nothing besides a weak sound when you fired.

I mean it is so hard to balance an MMOFPS, either the guns are weak to the point where you don't feel important or everyone dies fast. I prefer everyone dies fast to be honest, since I found WW2 online to be more fun.

I feel that an MMOFPS would benefit greatly from having a number of bots that exists for the sole purpose of getting brutally murdered by the players. Something that lets players feel more powerful than they actually are, you know? Just have them attached to squad leaders or for base defense only or something.

I feel that an MMOFPS would benefit greatly from having a number of bots that exists for the sole purpose of getting brutally murdered by the players. Something that lets players feel more powerful than they actually are, you know? Just have them attached to squad leaders or for base defense only or something.

Oh man, mixing in some Monday Night Combat with Planetside would be awesome.

I feel that an MMOFPS would benefit greatly from having a number of bots that exists for the sole purpose of getting brutally murdered by the players. Something that lets players feel more powerful than they actually are, you know? Just have them attached to squad leaders or for base defense only or something.

Oh man, mixing in some Monday Night Combat with Planetside would be awesome.

Kind of, yes. Though, the bots wouldn't be mandatory to winning the game / taking a base / whatever. That'd be obnoxious.

I tried planet side. I never knew when I was hitting enemies with my gun or not.

They need to take a page from halo and have the enemy show some sign of getting shot. Either a shield absorbing the shot or blood itself.

Or take a page from COD and have a completely different sound that occurs when YOU shoot someone. Heck, they should take a LOT from CoD. Basically, the user needs to get a ton more feedback about their play. Otherwise its way too easy to feel like you arent doing shit.

I wouldn't mind some NPC's in this game. Planetside was completely devoid of NPC's. It was all about the player, which was okay until there were not that many players around and the world suddenly felt like an empty playground.

Bots, wildlife, an NPC faction, roaming monstrosities (those ancient alien guys?) etc would fit well in a Planetside game I think, and spice up the variety as well. Hell, even just being able to hire a few NPC's to join your squad would be nice.

Monstrous aliens to add some wildcards would be cool. It would be nice to see some flavor NPCs in bases too perhaps. However I don't really like the idea of bots in combat, especially not bots under a player's control.

Monstrous aliens to add some wildcards would be cool. It would be nice to see some flavor NPCs in bases too perhaps. However I don't really like the idea of bots in combat, especially not bots under a player's control.

The MNC ones would fit well for this, they aren't a threat unless you are nearly dead, or afk, but make the fight feel more alive as there aren't long stretches of doing nothing waiting to get back to the fight/waiting for them to get back to the fight.

Morkath on February 2011

0

citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular

If there WERE bots, I think they'd be best implemented as "guards" at bases. Make them subject to the same respawn rules as players, and maybe have the number of them be based on a percentage of actual players there. So when there are only a few players at a base and a conflict starts, it's mostly NPC guards.

As players begin to filter in to reflect the escalation of the battle, maybe the overall number of guards would increase (to reflect the urgency of the situation) but the percentage of bots versus players would decrease, so that the majority of the defending force is player-based.

Bots or not, I'm extremely interested in this title. Not a "day one" purchase based on past issues, but I enjoyed the original enough that I'm going to be taking a hard look at this.

If there WERE bots, I think they'd be best implemented as "guards" at bases. Make them subject to the same respawn rules as players, and maybe have the number of them be based on a percentage of actual players there. So when there are only a few players at a base and a conflict starts, it's mostly NPC guards.

As players begin to filter in to reflect the escalation of the battle, maybe the overall number of guards would increase (to reflect the urgency of the situation) but the percentage of bots versus players would decrease, so that the majority of the defending force is player-based.

Bots or not, I'm extremely interested in this title. Not a "day one" purchase based on past issues, but I enjoyed the original enough that I'm going to be taking a hard look at this.

I think giving the bots a spawn cap and a spawn rate is all you'd need to get this to work. An unattacked base will spawn guards up to the cap and then sit there with a base full of bot guards. Then when the base is attacked, the bots die but slower than the respawn rate so they hover somewhere between max and 0. Then as the attacking force gets larger the bots die faster than the repsawn rate and you end up with no bots.

if there are a whole bunch of bots in bases how do you backhack the other factions while there is a war being waged on the other side of the island?! (planet, whatever the fuck planetside did throughout its evolution)

if there are a whole bunch of bots in bases how do you backhack the other factions while there is a war being waged on the other side of the island?! (planet, whatever the fuck planetside did throughout its evolution)

You don't. Because Backhacking is lame.

Bots could work, There were a lot of NPC's in Tabula Rasa and that worked out ok (Yes the game failed but the concept was solid)

Indigenous species, mercenaries, what have you. As long as they are tough and in enough numbers as to actually pose a threat I think they could work great as a wildcard of sorts. You take an enemy base, but unfortunately the local population decided to coordinate an attack as well, Now the guys you just took the base from are coming back to take it back. War on two fronts etc etc.

if there are a whole bunch of bots in bases how do you backhack the other factions while there is a war being waged on the other side of the island?! (planet, whatever the fuck planetside did throughout its evolution)

You don't. Because Backhacking is lame.

Bots could work, There were a lot of NPC's in Tabula Rasa and that worked out ok (Yes the game failed but the concept was solid)

Indigenous species, mercenaries, what have you. As long as they are tough and in enough numbers as to actually pose a threat I think they could work great as a wildcard of sorts. You take an enemy base, but unfortunately the local population decided to coordinate an attack as well, Now the guys you just took the base from are coming back to take it back. War on two fronts etc etc.

Backhacking was lame. But bot defenders would make gen dropping a thing of the past. Some of the best times I had were taking a single squad to the enemies tech plant and dropping the generator so they would lose access to their MBT, reavers, and BFRs at the main front. Seeing a red blip on the radar because someone moved too fast in the halls above and it triggered my audio amp. Frantically scavenging enemy corpses for ammo and supplies so we could survive the next wave of defenders attempting to retake their critical resource point.